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NBA final: Miami Heat are champions, but are they a basketball dynasty?

MIAMI—It is hard to define a sports “dynasty” in this day and age, it’s a nebulous theory and the era of the games in all sports is as different than ever.

Seldom does the same group of players stay together for more than a few seasons thanks to the vagaries of age, the financial demands on franchises these days and the desire of players to strike out on their own.

Miami's Big Three celebrate their NBA final Game 7 victory over San Antonio on Thursday night. It is their second consecutive title, prompting talk the NBA has a new dynasty in the making. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

But the Miami Heat have now played in the NBA final for three straight years and have won the last two championships. And while they cannot be dynastic in perhaps the truest sense of the word, they can be considered among the very best of the league’s most recent era.

And that will tick off an awful lot of people.

When the Big Three decided to get together and take their talents to South Beach — LeBron James and The Decision and Chris Bosh with The Deception joining up with established franchise icon Dwyane Wade — the grumbling around the league was loud and sustained.

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The promises of multiple championships rankled some, millions were irked by the premeditated nature of the moves — it was seen as a slap in the face to organizations trying to build in traditional ways.

The players themselves didn’t seem to care. They wanted to win quickly, and win often.

And after a first-year blip when they were trying to figure things out, they have morphed into one of the best “teams” in the past decade at least.

There hasn’t been a repeat champion in the NBA since the Chicago Bulls at the end of the Michael Jordan era and the early 2000 Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal Los Angeles Lakers.

“It says a lot about where we’re at now, the team that we are,” said Wade after Miami beat the San Antonio Spurs in a brilliant Game 7 of the NBA final on Thursday night.

“(In) 2010, our first year together, we tried to make it work and we just weren’t a team that we needed to be . . . to be in the championship three years in a row, to win two of those three, is unbelievable.

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“Everybody can’t get to the finals and win six and not lose one like Michael Jordan. But we are excited about the future of this organization. We are still a good team and we’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we can stay competitive.”

But fears that the Heat would simply roll over the opposition has turned out to be unfounded.

The first year together they didn’t have enough cohesion to hold off the Dallas Mavericks in the final; they were pushed to seven games by the Boston Celtics in the second round of the Eastern Conference final in 2012; they were stretched to seven games by the Eastern Conference final by the Indiana Pacers this year and pushed to the limit by the Spurs in an epic seven-game final that wound up Thursday.

Can you be a dynasty if you’re not totally dominant?

“If people say it’s only because of us that we lost or . . . we should have had an easier run, that’s not giving any credit to the Indiana Pacers or the Spurs,” said Miami coach Erik Spoelstra. “They were incredible challenges to us that we had to overcome. It’s never easy.”

And that may be the thing that keeps the Heat from joining the pantheon of true dynasties like the Red Auerbach Celtics, the Boston and Laker teams that owned the 1980s, the Jordan-era Bulls and maybe even these Spurs, who won four titles from 1999 to 2007 and were so close to one in 2013.

Those teams were like the sun, constant and strong; this Heat team, until it wins a couple more, is far more a meteor.

But the ride, so far, has been impressive.

“This is what it’s all about,” said James, after his 37-point, MVP performance in Game 7. “I came here to win championships, and to be able to go back-to-back, two championships in three years so far, it’s the ultimate.

“And the vision that I had when I decided to come here is all coming true. Through adversity, through everything we’ve been through, we’ve been able to persevere and to win back-to-back championships.

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